


ab irato

by noctipathos



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Anger, Angst, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Sibling Bonding, Tim Drake and Dick Grayson are Siblings, [20 page rant about the intricacies of dick and tim's relationship] im normal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctipathos/pseuds/noctipathos
Summary: Tim and Dick have a conversation about guilt and anger in the nebulous time period following Haiti.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 91
Collections: Dick & Tim, everybody loves dick





	ab irato

It’s not one of his better days. Outside is too bright, too saturated with sound, and Tim can’t focus his energy where it _needs to be_. He’s aware of a quiet worried presence a bit removed from where he’s pacing back and forth, but doesn’t have the right kind of energy to address it. The portraits on the walls watch him as he moves. It’s too much.

Tim exhales slowly as he abandons the manor’s lavishly embellished halls for the sterility of the steel staircase, the quietude of the Cave.

Definitely not a good day. His brain hasn’t stopped spinning since this morning and his chest feels like home to a thousand buzzing hornets, or maybe a Ceti eel. Something is curling up through the empty cavern of his body, something ugly, something _angry_. Tim descends the final flight, stepping off the platform and staring blankly into the expanse sprawled in front of him. His hands start to move against each other. _Fuck_. And Tim really tries not to curse (knows not to curse) but _man_. What a bad day. Bad, bad.

Something else. He needs something else filling his thoughts. Stalac _tites_ are the ones that hang from the roof. Stalag _mites_ rise from the ground. Bats are mammals of the order _Chiroptera_ , coming from the Greek for “hand wing”. Limestone (Tim can’t actually tell which rock is which, not yet, but he’s sure some of this _fucking shit_ has to be limestone) consists largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of— _fuck_!

Tim clenches his fists to silence them and screams.

His diaphragm nearly collapses in on itself with the effort of trying to force out every last hornet and eel and whatever other parasite that decided to take up residence in his chest today. The darkness curls around his vocalizations but it isn’t enough — _it isn’t enough_ — and Tim whirls around.

There are stacks of gauze in one of the cabinets by the physical training space. Tim glances at the most recently used roll ( _yesterday, a brutal five hour session_ ) but allows his eyes to slide over it in favor of the old free-standing punching bag that really shouldn’t still be around, but it was Dick’s favorite, and Bruce is a sappy old man at heart. It strikes a dim outline against the cool luminescence of the Cave and creaks as Tim lashes out.

He thinks he gets it — _thud_ — actually — _thud_ — like, why Bruce lives like this — _thud_ — it’s soothing — _thud_ — the omniscient shadows are — _thud_ — calming, allow for shelter, force the eye to strain outward rather than inward — _thud thud thud_ — on the rage and — _huh_?

“—im, Tim?” The light touch on his shoulder disappears as Tim spins around and lunges at his assailant, who moves up and over. “Woah, Tim, hey. It’s just me, sorry, tried to warn you but don’t think it was getting through,” and Tim would recognize, _has_ recognized, that flip anywhere.

Dick Grayson arches an eyebrow as he cautiously moves closer to Tim. “You with me?” He grimaces. “Really sorry about that. Didn’t want to touch you without asking, but I was calling your name, and you weren’t reacting, and your line of vision was like,” here Dick connects his hands in a V-shape, “focused.”

Straightening from the position he just realized was making him look like some misplaced scrag, Tim shakes out his hands, wincing slightly. Huh, his knuckles are red. “Ah, hi Dick. Don’t worry about it, sorry I didn’t hear you.” Tim only realizes his ears had been roaring now that they were quiet again. “Is everything okay?” Tim starts to walk toward the hub of computer consoles, head tilting. “Tech stuff? You need something?”

Tim had honestly forgotten Dick was still in town, much less the manor. Bruce had ostensibly needed his input on some multi-city case. Tim thinks he just missed Nightwing. Missed the better Robin, probably. _Fuck_.

Dick stretches out a hand to stop him, forehead creased. A bat ( _Eptesicus fuscus_ , maybe, Tim should know this, he should be able to tell) clicks faintly in the distance. “No, no, everything’s good. Gonna head back to the Titans later today, probably.”

“Oh, great,” Tim says as he frantically goes down his mental list of what else Dick could possibly need from him. “So, what’s up?”

“Alfie, actually, he sent me down here,” Tim furrows his brow in an unconscious match of Dick’s own expression. “Said you seemed…” Dick hesitates. “Stressed.”

Tim folds his arms, fingers digging into his arms. Alfred’s attention to the inhabitants of Wayne Manor has taken some adjustment. Was still taking some adjustment with Tim, honestly, who was used to exchanging a few scant words with Mrs. Mac throughout the week, coming and going as he pleased. “Not really sure what you mean, Dick. I’m fine.” But the thought of Drake Manor seems to have roused the hornets from their slumber, and he can hardly hear himself answer. “Totally cool.”

Dick glances at Tim’s bruised knuckles.

Tim shifts his weight and looks down.

“Tim,” Dick starts to speak, then hums gently. “Let’s sit, yeah?” The wooden bench closest to the punching bag was a beautiful maple wood, a luxury that would seem excessive if this were anywhere other than the Batman’s clandestine hideout underneath Bruce Wayne’s manor. Tim follows Dick and sits heavily, tracing the grain with his finger.

“Gonna be honest with you, Tim. You don’t seem totally cool.” Tim drums his digits on the cool veneer. The eel begins to chew through his guts with renewed vigor.

“It’s nothing.”

Sighing, Dick tilts his face to examine the high ceiling of the Cave. The soft illumination of the myriad lamps and electronics mixed with the natural darkness paint a mottled Rorschach against the nearest walls. _What do you see, Tim? Oh, nothing much. Maybe blood? A lot of blood, actually. My dead mother? The slopes of Gehenna?_

 _Though_ , and Tim squints, _that bit might be a tribble, Mr. Psychologist, sir. Hard to tell. Definitely a serious threat either way._

He wishes Dick would leave. Bad enough that Tim bothered Alfred with his mood — now _Nightwing_ has to deal with his problems. Just one more thing he’s fucked up.

The wood is unyielding beneath his fingertips.

“ There are lies more believable than truth, Mr. Drake,” Dick knocks his shoulder against Tim’s softly, “but that wasn’t one of them.”

And Tim knows exactly what the first Robin is doing, drawing upon Bruce’s endless lessons on compassion and kindness, how to handle victims, the best way to _comfort_ the traumatized child caught in the crossfire.

Tim’s eyes narrow. He’s not _traumatized_. And Dick shouldn’t be doing Robin’s job anymore — after all, he refused to take it back, right? This is Tim’s job now, right? Except he kind of _fucking sucks_ at it. Can’t comfort kids in the effortless way Dick can, with his overflowing charisma; can’t inspire implicit trust and love from his caretakers, like Jason; _can’t save his parents, like how Robin is supposed to_. And —

“You think I’ve been able to save everyone?”

Ah. Tim hadn’t realized he’d been vocalizing. There goes his cool and collected façade.

“Wasn’t much of a façade, Tim,” Dick says, smiling gently. “You were whaling on Mr. Moomin—” Tim snorts despite himself, because of course Dick had named the punching bag, “—pretty hard.” A hand brushes the tufts of Tim’s coiffed hair, and the feeling within him grows and grows and grows until Tim can feel it vibrating just underneath his skin, the disgusting cocktail of rage and helplessness swirling and he knows it’s branding him from the inside out as a failure, an embarrassment to the name, usele—

Tim’s temple has teleported to Dick’s muscled shoulder, _beam me over, Scotty_ , and…oh. Dick’s hand is scratching slow circles into his scalp, arm a warm presence on Tim’s upper back. Dick is looking up at a stalactite.

“You’re not a failure, Tim.” The hand is hypnotic. The comforting touch is foreign, but not unwelcome.

“I—” Tim hiccups. “I couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t save them?”

Tim nods against Dick’s arm as the latter gives his head a squeeze.

“You’re worried you can’t live up to the legacy of Robin.” Another nod. “And you’re angry. Really angry,” Dick hums before continuing. “And you don’t know what to do with it. It’s building up inside of you.”

“M-Mhm,” Tim forces the sound out, barely above a whisper. “That’s…yeah.” He sniffs miserably. “Yeah. A-and I don’t know how to…how to deal.”

Because Tim and anger have hitherto been unknown playmates. He knows what rage looks like, he’s a Gothamite with an invested interest in Batman, of course he can recognize it — but Tim himself had never dipped into the reservoir of fury so accessible to Bruce in the days following Jason’s death. Childhood and preadolescence had seen Tim existing quietly between the walls of his home, only broaching the translucent waters of _deep feeling_ when his feet got a little too close to the edge of his protective gargoyle as he watched his vigilantes leap across the city, and even that was only a burst of fear-fueled adrenaline.

But anger has always been displaced from Tim, an unknown element. This monster pawing at his insides, setting his molecules aflame every time he has a second to remember his mother’s gravestone ( _Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach, l’alam ul’almei almaya_ , sorry, mother, so sorry) and his father’s comatose form wrapped in bandages and —

Tim’s fault.

“I used to be a really angry kid too, you know,” Dick says. “A real terror.” He chuckles as Tim makes a soft sound of disbelief. “No, it’s true. Glaring at Bruce from the chandelier every other day, ignoring Alfred, beating the shit out of Mr. M.”

At some point Dick’s hand had left Tim’s head and started clutching the boy closer to his side. Tim can feel a sigh shift their bodies up and down. “Robin knows anger, kiddo. You know why Bruce took me on in the first place. I don’t have to tell you what happened.” The deltoid against Tim’s temple tenses almost imperceptibly. “I get it.”

Memories of that day flicker across Tim’s vision, never hard to recollect. The nightmares he had for years afterward made it hard to forget. Yellow-green flashing up, then down. And down, and down. A collective silence just after the fall, as though everyone watching were one entity praying for a miracle. Tim has never really considered just how much it must’ve hurt Dick to see those colors after his parents’ deaths. And on other people, at that. Ah.

“In the days before we caught Zucco, I couldn’t focus on anything else. It felt like,” Dick draws back the arm that had been encircling Tim to stretch out his open palm, “like, something was screaming inside of me. I threw myself into the violence of patrol because it was my only outlet.” His hand clenches into a fist.

“Did it,” Tim takes a shuddering breath as he straightens his back and grips the edge of the bench, tries to follow the smooth cadence of Dick’s voice. “Did it — I mean, how, how did it go away? I mean, you’re happy now? So how did you fix it, or like, what did you do so you didn’t feel so…” His voice trails off.

A beat passes. Dick hops onto his feet and stretches, before turning to ruffle Tim’s hair. “You don’t think I get angry anymore?”

“No? I mean…you maybe get, ah, a little stubborn, maybe?” Tim peeks up at Dick through the fringe of his mussed hair.

“Mr. Drake,” Dick laughs. “You’d better believe I still get pissed. Honestly, anyone who says they don’t is lying. Anger is a perfectly normal, perfectly human emotion.”

“Bu—”

Dick puts up a hand. “Ah, ah. _But_ , you’re going to say, _but I mean about my parents_. Firstly, I’m gonna say this.” He points upward. “We are in a literal bat cave, run by a not-as-literal bat _man_ , who dons a bat costume every night to wreak bat vengeance on bad guys, ’cuz he’s still sad about his parents dying.” Tim blinks. “Harsh, I know, but I’m trying to give it to you straight, buddy. You want people who cope totally healthily, you’ve come to the wrong cave.”

Tim blinks again. Dick sighs.

“Secondly. It won’t go away completely. At least, it hasn’t for me, it hasn’t for Bruce, and I don’t think it will for you. But, and this is my point, you make peace with it. Family. Friends.” He smiles softly. “A team.”

And it’s true, now that Tim thinks about it. While he never followed Dick as closely as he had Jason, the mitigating effects of the Teen Titans on the former were there, in hindsight. Less hiding in the shadows, more chatter to Batman. Lighter, more prone to smiling. It seemed good for him. Tim wonders if he'll ever have something similar. 

Tim allows his next breath to heave its way up through his chest and expels it in a weary sigh as Dick plops back next to him on the bench, their bodies close but not touching.

“And it’s not your fault, Tim. I know you think it is. I know you think you’re secretly responsible for them.”

“If I had just —”

“ _No_.” And Dick’s voice, which had been comfortably relaxed throughout the conversation, suddenly sounds as firm as Batman’s. “Tim, _it wasn’t your fault_. You think I haven’t blamed myself for my parents? Over and over?” A sneak at Dick’s profile shows that the man is staring ahead, expression impossible to read. Dick cuts his eyes to Tim, who jerks.

“My point is, I know how you feel. The burden suddenly on your shoulders, that somehow you should be omniscient and perfect. You’re not going to be, because no one is. Not me, not Bruce. Don’t let that bastard tell you differently. Bad things,” Dick’s eyes squeeze shut in a quick blink. “Bad things will happen. We won’t be able to stop all of them. _But_ — and this is an important but, so listen up — we stop a lot of bad things. And we do a lot of good things. Helping people. You do it. The bad things that happen will always stick out more, but the good things are here.” Dick smiles. “You just have to give them the same weight.”

Tim doesn’t know if he really believes him ( _my fault_ , it still knocks around in the vestiges of his brain, _mea culpa_ ), but he doesn’t feel worse, which must be the first step. He takes a breath. “All right.”

“I’ll say it as many times as you need me to. It’s okay if you don’t believe me right now, but it’s true.”

“Yeah.” And Tim feels a little stupid, forcing Dick to keep sitting with him, but he hasn’t left yet, right? “So, you think,” he appreciates whatever sixth sense Dick has that lets him know Tim needs to be in his own isolated bubble as he processes. “You think I’ll, uh, be okay?”

“You will. I promise.”

“Okay.” And, oh, the hornets have been gone for a while, haven’t they. That’s good. “I trust you.” Tim’s trusted Dick for a good while now, truthfully.

Tim’s hands flutter before he runs them through his hair. “Also, um, thanks for, you know, telling me. I’m,” he straightens his back, “very thankful for your support and kindness.” Dick chuckles, and the laugh spreads like a balm throughout Tim’s exhausted body.

“You’re so formal! Of course, Timmy. And any time you want to talk about,” he gestures broadly to the air, “this, or other stuff, just reach out, okay?”

Tim nods, praying that the ferocious happiness suddenly filling him wasn’t incredibly obvious. _Dick Grayson_ , saying he could go to him with any troubles. Kind of awesome, all things considered. “Thanks.”

They fall silent as the shadows curl gracefully around the bench. It’s a companionable quiet, one Tim enjoys, and he shuts his eyes as he inhales deeply through his nose, out his mouth. The solid presence of Dick at his side grounds him as the near-imperceptible whirring of the computers fills the air. He pictures tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the pain doesn’t overwhelm him.


End file.
